Net Neutrality and corporatism

The ISPs totally want to create artificial scarcity , and watch their revenue flood in like Noah parting the waters. The chairman of the FCC is a former verizon executive. His views echo those of broadband telecom giants. It's a big corporate conspiracy to rob the public of a dear resource. So that's the word on the street.

Now lets investigate an alternative viewpoint.

All these years We all knew in our hearts that the traditional "little internet" would not remain forever. It would eventually grow big and become corporatized. We knew this in the back of our minds and in our hearts for years, but could not admit it to ourselves because it hurts, and it hurts because we are nostalgic of a more innocent , freewheeling time in the past we had with our little internet.

Whereas personal computers were in 1989, machines that geeks would have in their garages and basements. A cottage industry they called it. PCs were toys played with nerds with their "Doogie Howser 8000".

Then the internet hit in the mid to late 1990s, but it was slow and 'text based' like IRC and telnet, and "news groups". It was still a part of the world occupied by a few nerds and geeks.

Throughout the 2006-2016 range was the rise of social networking, starting with myspace, converting over to facebook, then instagram, snapchat etc.

Since 2010, youtube, paypal, amazon, and eBay have transformed the landscape of online shopping in amazing unforeseen ways.

We should have known that internet would be "corporatized" eventually. It could not stay a cottage industry forever. And it won't. Big Corporate ISPs will start charging access to "bundled packages", just like they do on cable TV. They will create artificial lack for their own benefit. The innocent immature time of this technology must come to an end. The only problem here is our ability to mature and get over it.

Re: Net Neutrality and corporatism

The internet has been plagued by nefarious actors from the beginning. As soon as it existed there were hackers and viruses. It has never been a safe space.

There has been a lot of moaning and gnashing of teeth over demonized content on YouTube of late. Content creators who do anything other than cat videos or social justice propaganda have seen their videos demonetized. It really made the news when the Wall Street Journal went after Pewdiepie the most successful Youtuber on the internet. As a result of the hit piece Pewdiepie lost sponsors and millions in revenue. At the same time propagandists like Anita Sarkeesian go unchallenged. The question is why is the legacy media so determined to shut down free speech on the internet. Certainly CNN admitting that the Trump Russia story was a "nothing bigger" and that it was about little more than ratings doesn't indicate purity of purpose. Apparently it is only fake news if they say it is. Making the internet safe seems secondary to corporate and government control.

The story gets more complicated than just corporate greed and propaganda however if you consider that YouTube loses billions every year. The average internet user who uploads and or watches videos is not paying their fair share of the cost. Content creators often generate less ad revenue than they are paid. Google has responded apparently with censorship of anything not "mainstream" in hopes of maintaining ad revenue. I suspect they have picked the wrong side as young people are not interested in legacy media or social justice propagandist judging from views likes and dislikes and the fact that cable news average viewer is over 60. The baby boomers and slightly younger seem to be reacting to the coming generation the way their parents reacted to rock and roll.

There is a culture war going on and it isn't between Nazis and progressives they are both a tiny percentage of the population. It is between the failed policies of the left that have left the next generation with untenable debt and a younger generation that will likely see social justice as passe. Trying to censor the internet will likely backfire. Even if that is not the case it illustrates that the internet is more than just the latest communication technology.

The internet is increasingly the free press not restricted by globalist agendas, corporate interests or government censorship. That is that is what it would be if hate speech laws and other forms of censorship cropping up in places like Germany are not allowed to take hold. Free speech of course is dangerous as witnessed to by the Arab spring where fascist theocrats briefly took over Egypt.

A free and open internet remains the last hope that big government and big business will not turn our world into a fake socialist dystopia. It would be easy to underestimate how important this issue is. It would also be easy to underestimate the enemies of the liberal democracy that Marx hated. In the rush to destroy Western Civilization the strange bedfellows such as feminists and Islamists point to how desperate the enemies of free speech and liberal democracy can become.

How we keep the internet free is debatable but that we should seems self evident.

Re: Net Neutrality and corporatism

One of the issues that clouds this debate is the definition of "free." For example if you have a totalitarian government that ruthlessly cracks down on petty criminals (not a bad idea to me at the moment, having recently been the victim of some petty crime) so that law-abiding people are free to walk the streets in safety. There's a lot to be said for that, and the citizens would call themselves free.

Or you could have a hands-off government where the criminals can victimize decent people all day long. That would be in theory a free society, but people would feel oppressed by the crime.

The definition of freedom is itself very tricky.

With net neutrality, we have these same two opposite senses of freedom:

* Strong government control to keep the internet "fair" by some people's definition. Many would call that free. Advocates of net neutrality would call that free. In other words, government control creates freedom.

* Or, hands off. Then there will be market winners and losers, but there's no overall control, so in that sense it's free. Free as in free markets.

Both sides in this debate want to appropriate the word "free." Do we mean free FROM government interference? Or free DUE TO government interference? That's the heart of the debate.

Re: Net Neutrality and corporatism

There's not really two sides here, there's a small group of corporate executives and shareholders trying to gain feudal control over the internet by manipulating a corrupt political system. Whatever PR they're spinning isn't a valid perspective, there's no debate, there's just a bunch of greedy a-holes being told NO!

Re: Net Neutrality and corporatism

There's not really two sides here, there's a small group of corporate executives and shareholders trying to gain feudal control over the internet by manipulating a corrupt political system. Whatever PR they're spinning isn't a valid perspective, there's no debate, there's just a bunch of greedy a-holes being told NO!

Of course there's a debate. When people say "there's no debate" that's a debating tactic. There is always a debate between market freedom and government control. It's one of the oldest debates since we invented civilization. Individual freedom versus the collective. Freud wrote a book about it, Civilization and its Discontents. It's about the things that give people pleasure and the social and legal restrictions on those behaviors for the overall good of society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilizat ... iscontents

Just like with crime. Should the cops be allowed to bust down everyone's door looking for evidence of criminal activity? That would certainly remove a lot of criminals from the population. But most people are willing to tolerate a certain level of crime in exchange for personal autonomy in their homes.

Look at Singapore. Very clean city, not much crime. They can imprison you for chewing gum.

Now spray painting is vandalism and we'd all like to see less of it. Most of us, anyway. Some people (taggers themselves, and some art critics) would encourage it. There's a debate.

But would you flog a kid who spray painted a building? In the US, not, In Singapore, yes and it actually happened to an American. There are differences of opinion. There's a debate. A Singaporean would say, "See? There's no graffiti here." An American would say, "Jeez you don't cane people for petty vandalism. Besides, street art can be pretty cool when well done." There's a debate.

Net neutrality. Free market chaos with winners and losers? Or strong government control with more "fairness?"

Re: Net Neutrality and corporatism

Sometimes it's a tactic and sometimes there's just no legitimate argument. Can you make a legitimate argument for feudalism or piracy? Is there a good case to be made for racial apartheid?

There is always a debate between market freedom and government control. It's one of the oldest debates since we invented civilization. Individual freedom versus the collective.

These days most of us are just trying to establish a sensible balance that best serves the common good, only a few on the extreme fringes are arguing for totally unfettered markets or pure socialism. It's hard to see how tiered network access would be best for everyone? There are a few specious arguments that have about as much merit as the idea of trickle down economics, but ultimately it's being argued on principle and unfortunately for the ISPs it's not a principle that most of us give priority to.

Re: Net Neutrality and corporatism

The internet used to be called the information superhighway. I believe the metaphor of the highway is actually a useful model for how the internet should be regulated. Physical highways and roads serve an important purpose of connecting residential to commerce. Likewise, the internet allows virtual connection of residential to commerce. Therefore, assuming a worst case scenario - the end of net neutrality would be akin to private toll companies owning all the roads and increasing the rates on roads leading to certain businesses. The idea is so anti-public interest that we are content to have nearly every road built, maintained and owned by the government.

Likewise I see for the good of the common interest that net neutrality should remain. Alternatives I would suggest are creating government provided ISPs or trust busting these few mega-ISPs so that every person would have many companies to choose from in case a particular ISP limits access to greatly.

One difference to note however between the internet and physical roads is that the mega corporations built most of the infrastructure that powers the internet. Still - this was built upon huge government incentives so I'm not so inclined to agree with the notion of "our lines - our rules"

Re: Net Neutrality and corporatism

Likewise I see for the good of the common interest that net neutrality should remain. Alternatives I would suggest are creating government provided ISPs or trust busting these few mega-ISPs so that every person would have many companies to choose from in case a particular ISP limits access to greatly.

I thought about this and even if they killed net neutrality and other ISP's promised and promoted that they treated fair neutrality it would really suck. The idea is that in a free market, people would migrate to the ISPs that did follow net neutrality policies (but can you even trust them if they advertised that, I sure don't) but the mega ISPs would still have a huge advantage because the average customer doesn't educate themselves on this kind of stuff when purchasing an ISP.

I sure wish we could go back to the old days when we had multiple ISP choices. What the hell ever happened to regulations to limit monopolies? They appeared to have disappeared almost completely. These mega cable companies are the dirtiest companies I have ever dealt with. Took me hours and cussing over the phone just to get my service canceled and another time get them to honor agreements they promised. ATT and Direct TV (which are now merged) are among the most unethical companies I can think of.

Re: Net Neutrality and corporatism

SciameriKen » July 12th, 2017, 7:54 pm wrote:One difference to note however between the internet and physical roads is that the mega corporations built most of the infrastructure that powers the internet. Still - this was built upon huge government incentives so I'm not so inclined to agree with the notion of "our lines - our rules"

There's also the fact that most of the tech their business depends on was developed on the public dime. And that these corporations needed eminent domain right of way to run their lines across public and private land. The whole thing is just kind of ludicrous, allowing private monopolies to own telecommunications is a bad idea to begin with, granting them the power to restrict access to content through tolls and usage fees borders on the Orwellian.